In the spring of 1971, when I was a freshman at City College, my friend Jayson Wechter asked me if I'd like to play the lead role in a film he was making. He called it When Ya Gotta Go…, and it was about a guy who was trying to go to the bathroom but was constantly interrupted.

It sounded like fun and I agreed to do it.

Financed by a film cooperative, Jayson shot the movie at my house, in Brooklyn, where I was living with my parents, and cast it with an assortment of our friends and neighbors.

It’s a silent film, as sound syncing, in 1971, was a technological hurdle not easily overcome on a low budget. I’d also like to point out that I didn’t do nudity at the time, even if it was crucial to the plot, and that very brief glimpse of tuchas you’ll see was provided by a stand-in.

Over the ensuing decades, Jayson and I fell out of touch, and I pretty much forgot about the film. Then, through Facebook (naturally), I reconnected with Neil Zusman, the longhaired hippie on the left, in the above thumbnail. He had a digital copy of When Ya Gotta Go… and sent it to me.

How amazing it was to see myself in this time capsule, in my old apartment, with old friends and acquaintances, all of whom I’d lost touch with. If any of you happen to be reading this, here’s what I remember about you then and know about you now:

Jayson, who once made the news for pieing Watergate conspirator Charles Colson, is a private detective living in San Francisco.

The late Arthur Kirson, who plays the insurance salesman, was an English teacher at Erasmus Hall High School, in Brooklyn, and also faculty advisor to the student newspaper, The Dutchman.

Ethel Goodstein, the piano player, was my classmate at the City College of New York School of Architecture.

Neil, a classmate at Erasmus, is a Web designer, filmmaker, and teacher living in Ithica, New York.

Carey Silverstein, the other longhaired hippie, was a classmate at Erasmus and is now a rock musician living in Toronto.

"Rather like re-reading a favorite detective story ... though you know how the story's going to end, you still wind up willing the events to unfold differently." —David Thompson, Mojo magazine

"You feel like you are inside The Dakota with John Lennon and Yoko Ono." —The Huffington Post

"Captures with disturbing immediacy the pressure of being a celebrity … flirts with brilliance." —J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

"Robert Rosen's gripping account of Lennon's five-year seclusion in the Dakota building makes it impossible any longer to agree with the cozy popular image of him during this period as a devoted father and bread-baking domesticated househusband. This is a portrait of ... the twilight of an idol." —Allan Jones, Uncut magazine

"After reading this book I felt an affinity for Lennon; his life with all its torments, joys and pains was real to me." —Sydney L. Murray, Vision magazine

"An obsessive, corrosive, unforgettable account of Lennon and his menage at the Dakota. Even readers who never bought the air-brushed image of Lennon the benign father and house-husband are likely to experience powerful cognitive dissonance as they read Rosen's chronicle of weirdness, in which the tragic and the absurd are inextricably mixed." —John Wilson, Christianity Today

"What makes this book valuable is the sense that Rosen is providing as honest a characterization as possible—honest enough so that, in spite of Lennon's quirks and foibles, his genius ultimately shines through." —B.A. Nilsson, Metroland

"We become privy to first-hand knowledge about Lennon's final days which has never before seen the light of day ... this book makes for engrossing reading." —Steve Wide, Beat magazine (Australia)

"One of the most fascinating insights in Robert Rosen's book is that John knew that he, in the last half of the Seventies, exercised his greatest power to the extent that he wasn't seen; he was beyond success; he had achieved such fame that his five-year silence hummed more loudly than, say, any of Paul McCartney's appearances in People magazine." —Brian Murphy, Oakland University Journal

Praise for Beaver Street

"Beaver Street is an amazing glimpse into the adult industry." —Stoya

"Enormously entertaining ... Beaver Street captures the aroma of pornography, bottles it, and gives it so much class you could put it up there with Dior or Chanel." –Jamie Maclean, editor, Erotic Review

"Whatever twisted ... fantasy you might've had, you can bet that Rosen once brought it to life in print." —Ben Myers, Bizarre

"Shocking … evocative … entertaining.… A rich account that adds considerable depth and texture to any understanding of how the pornography industry worked." —Patrick Glen, H-Net